The ODEON cinema in Camden, London has upgraded to Vimpex’s Fire-Cryer® Plus 7-message voice sounders to ensure fast and safe evacuation of staff and the public in the event of a fire. The combination of the common alarm tone with clear and unambiguous voice messages ensures that there is no confusion when building evacuation is required. The Fire-Cryer® was specified by Peter Ford, ODEON UK’s Risk Management Director, following its use in many other ODEON cinemas across the UK in recent years. The upgrade was designed and installed by Premier Fire Systems Ltd, who has also worked on many of the other ODEON projects.
Commenting on the Camden ODEON project, Andy Cowen, Director of Premier Fire Systems Ltd, said: “Fire-Cryer® is a quality product, which allows us to provide our clients with a ‘value engineering’ solution to enable an existing fire alarm system to be easily converted for voice sounder evacuation.”
One of the main attractions of the Fire-Cryer® for use in applications such as Cinema refurbishments is the easy upgrade from the original sounder circuits, as often the existing wiring can be re-used. The units can be fully synchronised and have a low current consumption allowing simple replacement of existing sounders and bells. The Fire-Cryer’s® multi-message capability also ensures that system test and all clear messages can be easily transmitted avoiding confusion with the fire/evacuation alarm. Each unit can be programmed with up to 7 messages from a library of thousands, many of which are multi-lingual, ensuring that any site requirement can be fulfilled.
A total of 41 Fire-Cryer® Plus voice sounders were used in the upgrade at Camden ODEON, including standard wall-mounted white units and Midi and Maxi high-output variants. The wide product range available within the Fire-Cryer® Plus family is ideally suited to the different environments found in a typical cinema. Maxi Fire-Cryers®, with their high-power 116dBA output, are often positioned behind the screens providing wide coverage for the seating areas. The standard units, available in red and white and with optional strobes, make up the majority of the installations and provide an attractive and unobtrusive voice sounder solution for use in public areas.
The combination of 7 messages and a wide-range of compatible voice sounders ensure that the Fire-Cryer® Plus remains the most advanced range of voice sounders currently available and will continue to be the first choice for designers, installers and end-users.
